Art: NEW ACQUISITION: BOSTON'S COURBET

FEW painters managed to outrage the respectable standards of their day
with more gusto than France's master of 19th century realism, Gustave
Courbet. In his time he kept up a running battle with critics, who
found his work sordid and common, termed him a "butcher" and "a great
stupid painter." Today Courbet's work is attacked from the new academy
of abstraction as too photographic.

Courbet's crime lay in giving monumental treatment to everyday subjects
and drawing some of his deepest inspiration from direct contact with
nature. Among his favorite areas were the forests near his native
Ornans. It...